Thomas Showler – Convict – when did he die?

I obtained the death certificate of a Thomas Showler who died in 1860 at Cooma NSW in the hope that maybe it would show if he was the Thomas Showler, who was born in 1797 Aylesbury Buckinghamshire, who was the cousin of my GG Grandfather John Showler/Shoulders.

The Thomas Showler listed on this death certificate was listed as being of ‘about 50’ years of age, which would make his birth around 1810 but the informant could have just guessed his age. His parents were unknown and he died on or about the 7th November 1860. I’m not sure if this death certificate is for my Thomas Showler. This is another death recorded for a Thomas Showler at Liverpool Asylum in 1897 listing the parents of William and Amelia. I did a search of the NSW Birth Indexes and there is no birth for a Thomas Showler (or variants) to a William or Amelia. So I wonder if this death is the correct one, though the names of the parents do not match.

Now when I look at the death certificate for Thomas Showler who died in 1860, I was rather amused so see the cause of death being: “Exposure to cold whilst in a state of nudity being at the time labouring under temporary insanity”. The informant was Robert Dawson, police magistrate, Cooma.

Under Other comment was: ‘This man was well known in the district as ‘Tom the Groom’ and generally supposed to be of unsound mind’.

I’ve done a search on Trove, to see if there are any reports on the death to see if there was any other information but no such luck.

The Thomas I am looking for received a ticket of leave in 1838 in Goulburn. According to the convict indents he was married before he arrived in NSW in 1831.

I am only able to find one marriage for a Thomas Showler to a Hannah Beckett in 1818. Checking the Baptism records for Aylesbury, it appears that Thomas & Hannah had no children.

Now to make things unclear, another Thomas Showler was born in 1798 in Aylesbury (both Thomas’s were cousins). The second Thomas died in 1832, within days of his father William and his grandmother Elisabeth. They were all buried on the 2nd March 1832. A few websites I found indicated that an outbreak of Cholera in Aylesbury killed 50 people.

Hannah Showler (nee Beckett) is listed in the 1841 census as living with a Richard Holt and two of his children from his first marriage. Richard & Hannah later marry in 1848 and Hannah is listed as being a widow. So was she the widow of the Thomas that died in 1832 or was she the ‘widow’ of the Thomas who came to NSW as a convict?